Amman drowned on Thursday 5th November after 45 minutes of rain. As well as material damage, the severe floods resulted in four human losses, including two children. Citizens captured videos as dramatic as this one of a man trying to save a family caught in their apartment, which went viral on social media.
Rakan Qteishat, Jordan’s ‘Aquaman’, rescues six children trapped in a basement in Amman’s Hayy Nazzal.
For many who have lived or followed news on the Middle East in the last period, all this might sound familiar. In the last 5 years at least, different storms have been similarly destructive. The chaotic consequences of this and other storms like Bushra, Huda, or Alexa, have repeatedly been explained by Jordanian authorities in terms of the Capital’s topography, or the high volumes of rain over short periods of time.
But the fact is that in Jordan, it doesn’t rain in the same way for everyone. Rain seems to fall harder and more abundantly in the poor and disenfranchised communities that try to find a space in the valleys (‘wadi’) and overcrowded suburbs of the rapidly growing city. Spaces where surviving is the order of the day. It is therefore not surprising that neighbourhoods like Jabal Nuzha, Hayy Nazzal, or the urban refugee camps, where no investment in improving infrastructures ever seems to be a priority, and where families ‘live’ in substandard housing, are the most damaged areas.
In Jordan, it does not rain in the same way for everyone. This is why you might not be surprised, again, if I tell you that the two children that drowned during these floods were the children of an Egyptian labour immigrant that probably had little or no other choice than to migrate to Amman, hoping to provide a better life to his family. An Egyptian labour migrant that tried to find this space to survive in the expensive city of Amman on a ridiculous salary from multiple exploitative jobs in the ever-expanding informal sector. It is not surprising that this space for survival was one of the numerous basements in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Amman.
In Jordan, it does not rain in the same way for everyone. And this idea was callously put into a question by Amman’s mayor when he asked: ‘Who told you to live in a basement apartment?’ This question infuriated me and the majority in Jordan. And it was precisely this question the one that drove me to write this short reflection for the blog.
As well as shocking, infuriating, and many other words that might come up in the reader’s mind, this question is a clear reflection of a deeper socioeconomic class problem in Jordan: the political and economic elites of the country feel completely disconnected from the citizens. It is as if they lived in a different reality. I wonder if it was even raining for them.
Cartoonist Omar Hajjaj draws Aqel Baltaji, Mayor of Amman, during the floods
Among the numerous reactions and reflections I have read these days on the mayor’s words, probably the most brilliant one is that of Jordanian blogger Naseem Tarawnehtitled ‘The Socioeconomics of Bad Weather in Jordan’. The comment by Amman’s mayor reflects a lack of empathybetween social classes in Jordan. And in a country where the political and economic elites have grown to be one, this becomes extremely problematic in terms of public policy making. His words, on the point as always, are an excellent reflection on this problem.
So people naturally get angry. Some of the affected families and households demand compensation for damages that result from what they deem a lack of infrastructural readiness. And demands start taking a political turn. Jordanians start calling for the mayor’s resignation and blame the misuse of public funds in preparing the city for these yearly rains. Residents of Jabal Nuzha neighbourhood explain that not a single member of the parliament representing their district has visited or helped them, and that they will make sure none of these officials will be re-elected.
But in Jordan, also naturally, this brief initial period of anger soon fades away. Entire neighbourhoods resign. ‘We will have to stick together and fight for our own rights, no one else will’. There is no faith or trust in those in charge of putting an end to the repeated catastrophes. Everyone knows it clearly did not rain in the same way for them.
Like always, frustration tries to find a way out. People flood social media with sarcasm and humour as a way of escaping. Escaping this well-known reality; the reality of a situation where society has assumed that no one cares about the other, and where this other already knows he is not cared for, and just resigns. Because in a region of uncertainty, Jordan remains afloat in a sea of rough waters that no one wants to fall into.
So what is left? One option is to just wait until the next rain and pray, as in this comic by Cartoonist Omar Abdallat, that next time rain will be lighter. Or maybe people could remember, as Tarawneh brightly posed in his blog, that ‘only the rain is in God’s hands; everything else is in ours’.
Author: María Blanco
